TCM's Film Noir of the Week at Midnight ET Saturday Night-Sunday morning is Caged (1950). Eleanor Parker stars as a young woman implicated in a forty-dollar stickup pulled by her stupid husband. She enters prison as an innocent who has to become a hardened con in order to survive.

Agnes Moorhead plays a sympathetic Warden. The huge Hope Emerson is a vicious matron who delights in persecuting Parker. Betty Garde is the boss con serving time for murder, who occasionally bribes Emerson.

Up to that time, prison movies made you wonder, “Why are all these nice people in prison?” Caged is a corrective.

It repeats at 10 a.m. ET on Sunday, May 13.

N.S.: Three or four years ago, my chief of research and me saw The Snake Pit (1948), starring Olivia de Havilland, as a woman who has a nervous breakdown. de Havilland was marvelous, and was up for Best Actress.

Not long thereafter, we saw Caged, and I realized that it had ripped off the The Snake Pit’s story, and transplanted to to a women’s prison. Still, the acting was wonderful. As the protagonist, Eleanor Parker had to depict a transformation, which she pulled off with great subtlety. Agnes Moorhead plays a very sexy and kindhearted, but not foolishly so, warden. And then there’s Hope Emerson.

TCM's Film Noir of the Week at Midnight ET Saturday Night-Sunday Morning is Crime Wave (1954). Crime Wave has a great cast. Sterling Hayden is a no-nonsense LAPD detective. Ted de Corsia is a Fifties-Style crook leading a small gang which includes Timothy Carey and a beginning actor named Charles Buchinsky (later Charles Bronson) as psycho types. de Corsia and Bronson are San Quentin escapees who kill a cop while robbing a downtown LA gas station.

Bronson might have more dialogue in this film as a supporting actor than he did as the lead in Hard Times (1975).

Gene Nelson (usually a song and dance man) plays a ex-con trying to go straight when the crooks come to his apartment and rope him into their bank robbery scheme. Phyllis Kirk plays his loyal wife whom the gang holds hostage to get Nelson to go along.

Andre De Toth directed. Warner Brothers wanted Humphrey Bogart and Ava Gardner but De Toth went with Hayden and Kirk. A very enjoyable B film which I highly recommend.

About Me

I am a dissident journalist, whose work has been published in dozens of daily newspapers, magazines, and journals in English, German, and Swedish, under my own name and many pseudonyms. While living in internal exile in New York, where I am whitelisted, I maintain NSU/The Wyatt Earp Journalism Bureau and some eight other blogs (some are distinctive but occasional venues, while others are mirrors), and also write for stout-hearted men such as Peter Brimelow and Jared Taylor. Please hit the “Donate” button on your way out. Thanks, in advance.
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